Legal and General Investment Management Case Study
Migrating legacy applications to the cloud
- Estafet Team
The Story
Legal and General Investment Management, one of Europe’s largest asset managers, needed to move nine legacy applications to the cloud to reduce costs and improve flexibility. With a looming contract renewal, the Estafet team had just weeks to complete the migration. Using opensource tooling, we identified key technical issues, prioritised the apps to migrate based on complexity and business needs, and selectively updated outdated libraries. Estafet also automated builds and tests, adding documentation and adapting some applications into microservices to ensure easy updates. The target platform was Red Hat OpenShift (a Kubernetes distribution) and transitioning to it extended the life of the applications by making them supported and maintainable, as well as supporting business agility.
Challenges
- COST EFFICIENCY AND CONTRACT DEADLINE
- LEGACY TECHNOLOGY
- FUTURE AGILITY AND SUPPORTABILITY
Prioritising the migration
Estafet prioritised each application’s migration according to business impact, technical complexity, and planned release timelines. Using Windup, we could identify dependencies on outdated libraries and any compatibility issues with the target platform (EAP on OpenShift), which helped to gauge the effort required for each migration. Applications critical to daily operations or high-value functions were migrated first, ensuring minimal business disruption. Estafet and LGIM collaborated on a cost-benefit analysis for each refactoring decision, considering factors like upgrade requirements, automation needs, and potential future agility. This systematic approach allowed the team to tackle simpler, high-impact migrations first, and the group similar applications to achieve economies of scale by migrating them together.
The Solution
Estafet’s solution involved migrating nine legacy Java applications from on-prem (Windows) to Red Hat OpenShift hosted on AWS. We used Windup to find compatibility issues between the legacy libraries, prioritising applications based on business needs and technical complexity. Estafet then selectively refactored the applications, upgraded outdated libraries, and automated builds and tests to enhance maintainability. Some systems were redesigned as microservices to extend their lifespan and improve flexibility. This solution not only enabled rapid migration but also increased cost savings, supportability, and agility.
Deliverables
- CONTAINERIZED AND MIGRATED APPLICATIONS
- ENHANCED AUTOMATION AND DOCUMENTATION
- SELECTIVE REFACTORING AND MICROSERVICES ARCHITECTURE
The Success
Legal and General Investment Management achieved substantial cost savings and modernization by migrating nine legacy applications to AWS OpenShift. Estafet’s swift, strategic approach identified and resolved key compatibility issues, selectively refactoring applications to ensure rapid deployment without compromising quality. By incorporating automated DevOps pipelines and updating documentation, the migration not only reduced immediate operational costs but also simplified long-term maintenance. Additionally, refactoring some applications as microservices extended their lifespan and prepared them for evolving business demands. This success delivered immediate financial benefits, improved supportability, and enhanced agility, positioning the organisation for sustained operational and business growth.
Outcomes
- COST SAVING
- INCREASED AGILITY AND FLEXIBILITY
- IMPROVED SUPPORTABILITY AND FUTURE-PROOFING
